However, the reader quickly notices that everything isn't as Montag wants it to be. When he views himself in the firehouse mirror after a night of burning, he grins 'the fierce grin of all men singed and driven back by flame.' At first, Montag believes that he is happy. When books and new ideas are available to people, conflict and unhappiness occur. Without ideas, everyone conforms, and as a result, everyone should be happy. Therefore, Montag, along with the other firemen, burn the books to show conformity. Books are not to be read they are to be destroyed without question.įor Montag, 'It was a pleasure to burn.' The state mandated that all books must burn. As a fireman, Guy Montag is responsible for destroying not only the books he finds, but also the homes in which he finds them. However, firemen have been given a new occupation they are burners of books and the official censors of the state. In this dystopian (dreadful and oppressive) setting, people race 'jet cars' down the roads as a way of terminating stress, 'parlor walls' are large screens in every home used dually for entertainment and governmental propaganda, and houses have been fireproofed, thus making the job of firemen, as they are commonly known, obsolete. The world was bankrupted of ten million fine actions the night he passed on.In the first part of Fahrenheit 451, the character Guy Montag, a thirty-year-old fireman in the twenty-fourth century (remember that the novel was written in the early 1950s) is introduced. How many jokes are missing from the world, and how many homing pigeons untouched by his hands.

Often I think, what wonderful carvings never came to birth because he died. He was part of us and when he died, all the actions stopped dead and there was no one to do them just the way he did. I cried because he would never do them again, he would never carve another piece of wood or help us raise doves and pigeons in the back yard or play the violin the way he did, or tell us the jokes the way he did. And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn’t crying for him at all, but for the things he did. He was also a very kind man who had a lot of love to give the world, and he helped clean up the slum in our town and he made toys for us and he did a million things in his lifetime he was always busy with his hands.

When I was a boy my grandfather died, and he was a sculptor. And at the museums, have you ever been? All abstract.

And most of the time in the cafes they have the jokeboxes on and the same jokes most of the time, or the musical wall lit and all the coloured patterns running up and down, but it's only colour and all abstract.

They name a lot of cars or clothes or swimming-pools mostly and say how swell! But they all say the same things and nobody says anything different from anyone else. Or I listen at soda fountains, and doyou know what?''What?''People don't talk about anything.''Oh, they must!''No, not anything. As long as everyone has ten thousand insurance everyone's happy.Sometimes I sneak around and listen in subways. Sometimes I even go to the Fun Parks and ride in the jet cars when they race on the edge of town at midnight and the police don't care as long as they're insured. I just want to figure out who they are and what they want and where they're going. Sometimes I ride the subway all day and look at them and listen to them. But most of all,' she said, 'I like to watch people.

Fahrenheit 451 annotations